Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Canadian Health Care: No Waiting for Dogs and Cats

Not all Canadian health care is long lines and lack of innovation. We found one place where providers offer easy access to cutting-edge life-saving technology, such as CT scans. And patients rarely wait.

But they have to bark or meow to get access to this technology. Vet clinics say they can get a dog or a cat in the next day. People have to wait a month.

~John Stossel's latest column "Socialized Medicine Is Broken and Can't Be Fixed" (Note: The overall Canadian median waiting time for CT scans is 4.3 weeks in the traditional 12 specialties and and 4.5 weeks for psychiatry, see Fraser Institute.)

Meanwhile, waiting times for "free" health care in Canada for humans keep getting longer, according to The Fraser Institute (see chart below, click to enlarge). Note that the median wait time for a specialist in Canada increasd by 138%, from 3.7 weeks to 8.8 weeks, in just the 13-year period between 1993 and 2006.